The Crown of the Usurper

by Gav Thorpe

  The landwards wall of the villa itself covered with scaffolding at the moment, surrounding the wooden skeleton of a new tower overlooking the approach from Menesun. Meanwhile Dor had teams of legionnaires working in the courtyard sawing and chiselling pieces of wood and twining thick rope into springs, to make a spear thrower that would be hauled up to the tower when complete.

  The engineer had other plans too, and had spent the afternoon explaining them to Ullsaard as the pair had watched the unfolding works.

  "It's not like we'll be able to hold off a legion or anything, but we can sleep a bit safer at nights," said Dor as the two of them walked along the stone beach. He had just been explaining his idea of tar-filled pits behind the walls, which could be set alight if the enemy tried to break through or climb over.

  "I don't want another Askhan wall," said Ullsaard, glancing at the engineer. Dor was a solidly built man, though much shorter than the king. His face was constantly darkened with stubble, and his scalp was the same. As he spoke he gestured frequently with grime-stained, knobbly-knuckled hands with broken fingernails. He walked with a slight limp; a pale scar ran along his right shin from foot to knee as evidence of some accident or battle injury in the past.

  "I don't understand, king," replied Dor. "The Askhan Wall is a marvel; even more of an achievement when it was built."

  "And completely pointless," said Ullsaard, stopping. "If someone comes here looking for a fight, I want to be ready, not half-prepared to weather an attack from the whole empire. We don't need to be legion-proof, just able to defend ourselves.

  "It would help if you were to tell me who might be attacking, king," said Dor, not meeting Ullsaard's eye. "The Mekhani are the closest threat, do we need to dig behemodon traps?"

  "Are you taking the piss?" snapped the king.

  "Not at all!" Dor replied hurriedly, and Ullsaard could tell from the shock on the engineer's face that his suggestion had been serious.

  "I don't think behemodon pits will be needed," said Ullsaard. Dor was still looking crestfallen at the king's accusation. "If it comes to it, I'll just punch them, eh? Look, these works are just precautionary. I am going to be spending a bit of time here, so I want to feel secure."

  "I understand, king," said Dor, though he could not wholly mask a dubious look. The engineer quickly looked away, across the lake. Ullsaard followed the man's gaze, seeing the black sails of a few fishing vessels in the distance. The lake was not quite so big that it stretched to the horizon, and the surrounding hills on the duskwards side could be seen, dotted with small crofts that were home to a few scattered goatherds and peat diggers.

  It was a nice, semi-wild spot, and that was why Ullsaard had originally chosen it. He and Cosuas had driven Mekhani invaders back across the hills from here and by ancient right of the conqueror the lands had been given to Ullsaard as first captain of the Thirteenth. It had been that victory that had secured his elevation to General of the Blood, and aside from a brief visit before his attack into Mekha Ullsaard had not been back.

  There was a muted beauty about the place. Ullsaard was not one for landscapes usually; he was too practical. However, the pale blue-grey of the lake, the washed-out purples and greens of the heather-covered hills and the dark canopies of the lakeside woods had an undeniable appeal.

  "Do you need me for anything else, king?" Dor broke into Ullsaard's short reverie.

  The king looked at the distant slopes and followed their line around the lake to where they were split by the Menes river, from which the local town took its name. There were rough pastures on the slopes, where pigs and goats were driven out to feed.

  It was quaint and reminded Ullsaard of the wooded hills of Enair where he had been raised. It was also too easy for an enemy to ford across the mouth of the Menes and attack along the shore.

  "How would you widen a river?" he asked, the question eliciting a smile of approval from Dor.

  COLDWARDS OF THEDRAAN, ERSUA

  Late Autumn, 213th Year of Askh

  I

  Nonchalantly leaning against the gatepost of a farmstead, Gelthius bit into the dark red apple in his hand. He chewed slowly, watching the column of Legionnaires disappearing into the distance, heading duskwards along the new Salphor road. Ranks after rank of black-crested soldiers marched in ragged lines, a veritable company of Brothers in black robes to accompany them.

  "Ah, the bastards are going the wrong way," said Muuril, standing on the wagon by the gate, one hand held against the watery afternoon sun. The weather had turned fair for the last couple of days, drying puddles that dotted the paved the road the men from the Thirteenth had been following.

  It had been a close run thing for the first two days since their escape from Marradan. They had been only a few miles away from the city when the five hundred blackcrests had marched out. With the Brotherhood's soldiers close behind, Gelthius had stayed on the main road, pushing the abada for a couple of extra hours each evening to open up some distance on the following column. Heading for Thedraan, where he hoped to lay low with his family, the third captain had been torn between avoiding the pursuing force and warning Ullsaard.

  It had been Loordin, unusually, who had convinced the captain to head for the king's villa as quickly as possible, even though they risked being caught by outriders on kolubrids, or by a garrison that might receive word ahead of them. The legionnaire had put it succinctly: "If they get to the king, we're all fucked one way or the other."

  So they had kept to the road and made the best time they could, and had reached the brow of a hill crested by the road a few miles from the streets of Thedraan. The town could be seen to hotwards, almost empty now that the last market had ended and the farmers had gone back to their holdings, and the nobles back to the larger, comfortable towns and cities.

  Gelthius moved back to the wagon, and saw Faasil staring intently at the column of legionnaires heading dawnwards. Even when Gelthius pulled himself up to the driving board beside him, Faasil's gaze was fixed on the departing troops.

  "What now?" asked Muuril. "They clearly ain't heading for Menesun."

  "I reckon Gebriun gave them the run around a bit," said Gelthius. There was a small but noticeable flinch from Faasil when Gebriun was named. "Must have told them the king was in Salphoria."

  "We head back to the king, fast but not reckless, and let him decide, right?" said Muuril. "No attracting attention or anything."

  "Sounds good to me," said Gelthius.

  "We can't see our folks in Thedraan," said Muuril. "Got to keep going past."

  "Why not?" asked Loordin. "My wife won't be happy about that, and I've got a two year-old boy I haven't seen since he were born. She finds out I was only a mile away and didn't come by, she'd tear my balls off."

  "They'll want to come with, won't they?" said Muuril. "If the king's expecting a fight, and it looks like he'll get one, we don't need a bunch of women and kids at the villa."

  Loordin directed a plaintive look at Gelthius.

  "Right enough," the Salphor said with a sigh, admitting the truth of the sergeant's words. "And if word gets out that there's men from the Thirteenth back, it could cause other problems too."

  "Right, well you can tell Maagri that when I do get to see her, right? It'll be your balls, not mine, right?"

  "If she's as understanding as my Maredin, I'm sure your balls'll be fine," said Gelthius. He met Loordin's stare with a straight face for as long as he could, which was not long, and then the pair of them burst out laughing.

  "I'll take Maagri over Maredin, any day," said Loordin. He stood up and clapped a hand to Gelthius' shoulder. "You don't have need for that pair of hairy prunes anyway, do you? You haven't used them in years."

  Gelthius smiled but said nothing. Faasil had been quiet throughout, making no mention of his sister and two daughters in Thedraan; his wife had died after the birth of their second child. He wore the same determined stare he had been directing towards the legions.

  "Get us on, right enoug
h," said Gelthius, pointing at the reins that hung beside Faasil. "Five days at least until we reach Menesun."

  There had been less clatter and clamour around the villa in the past few days. Dor was running out of improvements to make to the defences, and Ullsaard was running out of patience with Dor's more outrageous suggestions for defensive fortifications and devices. Work was still ongoing on the outer rampart of earth and stakes, and walls were being built further up the road leading to the villa, to provide rally points and cover for archers defending the approach. The spear thrower had been finished and hauled into position to the roof tower, mounted on the same system of wheels and gimbals as the ones of the Askhan Wall, apparently. It could traverse almost all of the way around a circle, leaving only a small blind spot to duskwards where it could not point. The tower itself was sparse, made of wooden beams and rope, with no real cover for the men at the top – anything more substantial might prove too heavy for the villa walls, Ullsaard had been informed.

  Dor was currently in Menesun commandeering the small forge that the locals ran. He needed to make bronze heads for the bolts, and there was no way of doing that properly at the villa. He had also commissioned a large number of clay pots from the brickworks outside Genladen, which he intended to fill with oil and stopper with wicks to create firebombs. There was also a need for more arrows, though they would have sharpened, fire-hardened wooden tips rather than proper arrowheads because there was not enough bronze for everything.

  Standing on the balcony of the main bedchamber, Ullsaard could see the gate, the courtyard and down the hill towards Menesun. If he looked to his right, he could just about see a loop of the lake shore. The largest part of the villa was three storeys high, and the king's chambers were on the top floor; the other two floors had been turned into dorms and additional storage for his company of men. On the coldwards end of the villa, to the king's right, a single-storey wing jutted out from the front of the building, inside which Blackfang was housed in a dark pen.

  The villa itself was made of stone blocks, heavily plastered, capable of withstanding even a direct hit from a catapult. The paint was cracking in places, the plaster's off-white showing in patches through the dark ochre and patterns of red and blue spirals. The roof was not so secure, being made of red clay tiles. Dor had been into the attic space under the roof and secured heavy canvas sheets between the tiles, toughened with strips of leather to prevent shrapnel scything down into the upper storey, but there was nothing to stop a well-placed boulder plunging down through every floor.

  There were smaller, timber-built structures inside the wall of the compound – a storeroom, tool shed and other outbuildings. To hotwards, about fifty paces outside the wall, was the abada corral. Three of the beasts plodded about inside the reinforced fence, munching on the long grass. The road leading from the gate bent sharply left about a hundred paces from the compound wall, turning to Menesun that lay three miles to hotwards. Everything else was a mixture of grassy pasture, and gorse and heather-covered hills, until Ullsaard could see only a green and purple blur in the distance.

  The wind was strengthening, bringing a chill off the lake, and he had a cloak wrapped around his shoulders, over a shirt, jerkin and breastplate. He remembered complaining to Cosuas about the scorching heat of Mekha, but a long and cold campaign across Salphoria, and the dampness in the air now, made that seem like a lifetime ago. It was less than two hundred miles to the official border with near-Mekha, where the plains of Ersua eventually gave way to the sun-baked lands of the Mekhani.

  He had never felt the cold like this before, and wondered if he had caught something in Salphoria, or if it was just his age. He would be fifty at the start of the next year. Askhans did not celebrate birthdays, but reckoned their age from the midsummer new year after they were born. It was a good age, not the longest lived, but older than many he had known. Longevity was most likely another gift of the Blood.

  Although everything was shaping up nicely, the king was beginning to regret his course of action, as sensible as it had seemed at the time. There had been no runners from the men in Marradan for nearly eight days, which meant that either something bad had happened to them, or there was nothing worthwhile to report. This latter possibility made Ullsaard wonder if he should have gone directly to Marradan instead of scurrying down to Menesun to make a bolthole. It had been the cautious, sensible option, and that almost made it the bad choice in Ullsaard's eyes.

  He had been burnt too many times to not watch his back though, and the present situation required a delicate approach; not Ullsaard's strongest trait. This was not war, not yet, at least. They were still in the realm of pure politics, and that was a world that was muddied and vague, and still something of an undiscovered territory to Ullsaard. He wished he had Noran with him, to be that voice of calm and caution, to weigh in against the king's natural desire to act.

  You have me.

  "When you choose to interfere," Ullsaard replied quietly. It was the first time since leaving Carantathi that the ancient king had made his presence known. "Where were you before I crossed into Ersua? Advice might have been helpful then."

  Without the Crown as my anchor I… drift, and it is hard to settle in your thoughts. For the first time, Ullsaard felt that he not only heard Askhos' words but could feel something of the man within him; he felt the old king's uncertainty. I admit, I do not know what is going to happen to us now. The Crown was the lock and the key, the ship and the anchor. I think Lakhyri sought to cast me out altogether.

  "Where? Where would you be cast out to?"

  Do you remember when you dreamt you were in my tomb, Ullsaard? The king shuddered, which was all the answer Ullsaard needed. That is right. It was in endless nothingness of stars and dust, you said. The Crown was my tomb and my womb. The only beacons I have left in that emptiness are your thoughts.

  "How can the Crown be a place?"

  Do you really want to know the answer to that question? Ullsaard did, and the old king knew it. There was the mental equivalent of a sigh. When looked at from the top of the hill in front of you, this villa might seem solid, yes? That what you can see is everything there is to see?

  "Like a box, with its lid closed?"

  Exactly. You have a good mind, Ullsaard. Something else I gave to you through the Blood. It is a shame you use it so sparingly.

  Ullsaard's impatience flared and he felt a reaction from Askhos, as if the king had flinched. The current king did not mention what he had felt, and Askhos continued his explanation without remark.

  All things are like this house. They seem to us solid because we look at them from far away. We do not have eyes powerful enough to see inside the little windows and doors. In that space, between the smallest pieces of what a thing is, you can hide entire universes. The Crown appeared to be a thing of gold and iron, as solid as the floor or your head, but it was a gateway into another place, filled with nothing save for my consciousness and… Well, it does not matter what else is in there.

  It was there again, the hesitation and fear Ullsaard had felt before. There was a lot that Askhos had never told him, and never would, but just as the ancient king could see Ullsaard's thoughts, Ullsaard now had a sense of what Askhos was thinking.

  "There are other things in the void between, aren't there?"

  None of this is relevant to your present predicament. Do you wish to have my help or not?

  "You might have something to say that is useful," said Ullsaard, resolving that he would return to the subject of the place in-between when he had the opportunity. If Askhos' grip on reality was as bad as the king claimed, it made sense for Ullsaard to take what he could from Askhos' knowledge and experience while he could.

  You fear that through inaction you have surrendered the advantage to your son.

  Ullsaard watched as the guard was changed below. The men at the gate sloped off towards the kitchens while the new legionnaires on duty took up their positions. It did not matter whether they were in the mountain
s of Salphoria, the deserts of Mekha or a well-appointed village in Ersua, soldiers were always the same; the first thing on their minds after getting off duty was a bite to eat and something to drink.

  Are you ignoring me? You haven't asked me what I would have done in your position.

  "I don't want to know what you would do; I'll make a decision for myself."

  I would have brought the legions back with me. You've conquered Salphoria once, you can always do it again if you are forced, but you only need to lose the empire once.